OCEAN CITY, Md. -- The Ocean City Fire Department will have a new place to call home later on this year. A state-of-the-art fire station is being built on 65th street, right in the heart of the resort town.
The three story facility will feature a gym, office space, two huge bay areas for fire apparatus, a balcony and de-contamination rooms. That last part, for OCFD Chief Richard Bowers, is one of the best parts.
"It's excellent because it will provide improved response times to certain areas of the city, it will allow our men and women to have improved living and working conditions," said Bowers. "Also it will help, in the design and then the build stage now, prevent cancer with some of the de-con mechanisms that we have built into the station."
Ryan Whittington with the OCFD said one of the other crucial parts of this new facility will be on-site training. Upper levels consisting of windows and concrete walls will allow firefighters to practice and perfect a multitude of necessary skills.
"If a firefighter wants to just work on proficiency at forcing doors or firefighter bailouts or rope or any type of thing, this is an area where they can come and they will actually be able to do that right here inside the fire station," said Whittington.
Whittington said that is a huge help, because if crews are training outside of town limits, they are not in a position to help out with any potential emergencies.
The Worcester County community, if they choose, can be a part of this new station.
"One of the unique things that the Ocean City Fire Department is doing with the construction of this fire and EMS building is allowing the community to be a part of our facility by having a legacy built in with the pavers," said Bowers.
The walkway will feature the names of people who buy a brick, or the name of someone they would like to remember.
"If they have a loved one or anything they want to memorialize, they're able to do that and we'll have a walkway from the entrance all the way down the side of the building," said Bowers.
Construction is expected to end in August of this year with a ribbon cutting scheduled, roughly, for September.
If you would like to learn more about the memorialized walkway, you can visit this link.